"Damn it, Twilight! How the hell did you think they would take it!?"
Drops of blood rhythmically dribbled down upon the wooden floor with a sluggish tempo. Hooves on her head, Twilight Sparkle sat huddled in the center of the dreary room with little light or life. Curtains denied any light from entering the shop's main room. Eyes wide open and stained with horrific shock, scarlet matter drizzled from the tip of her horn which pooled below her. The ichor of Pinkie Pie covered Twilight's face and hooves, smeared giving her a primitive look to accompany her aghast expression. Speechless, she merely stood there, mind reeling as Rainbow Dash barked at her with impatience.
"Twilight!" Rainbow snarled with rage as she pressed her back against a large wooden door. Dirt and sweat blurred her beautiful blue fur and her mane laid bedraggled against her flesh. Repeatedly the door that she stood propped against jolted against her, apparent that something on the other side wanted in. Cries of frenzied rage and dismay could be heard from outside. Rainbow's hooves screeched along the floor as ever few seconds the door pushed her back, but each time she bit down, found her resolve, and regained her composure as the weight keeping the outside out. "I need your help!"
Twilight continued her listless staring, comatose.
"Please! I need-"
A rather violent force jarred the door open an inch. A streak of light shone in as for a moment boisterous voices of deranged fury could be heard before Rainbow rammed the door back shut with all of her being.
She cried out an frustrated curse as she glowered at Twilight, "I need your help!"
Twilight only stood there, gore still trickling into a pool of horror from the tip of her horn.
"Twilight!"
The unicorn remained catatonic.
Tears of dismay began forming in the corners of the blue pegasi's eyes as her legs began to bow and wobble against the wooden barricade. "I... I can't-! Twilight!" Her voice cracked as she howled at the top of her lungs.
With a sickening crack, the door wrenched wide open, sending Rainbow Dash sprawling onto the floor. Voices, a chorus of hysterical cries and garbled exclamation bellowed in from the other side of the threshold. The sound was overwhelming. Something snapped in Twilight as her head jerked around to face the direction of all of the commotion. Her eyes initially stayed agape with shock, but quickly shrunk as her expression turned to one of fear and realization as she came back to reality. Sunshine spilled forth, illuminating most of the dank room. Eyes blinded by the sudden bedazzlement of light Twilight barely noticed the contorted sillhouette blunder into the room.
Screaming with rage Rainbow Dash laid on the floor, reeling. Her hoof brushed against something metal in the obscured dark and she grasped at it. She plucked herself up from the floor threw herself with all of her might at the door now with a fireman's axe in hoof. Her lithe body crashed into the ajar door, slamming it shut with brute force. Several organic hooves from outside clamoring at the frame of the doorway were caught in the swinging door, causing several cries of agony to sound out before they withdrew from their grips on the building. Crying out loudly, she swung the axe with gusto at the base of the door, wedging the blade of the instrument in the narrow space between floor and door. Twilight watched as she slumped down against the door, exhausted. Relieved that she had the door wedged shut, Rainbow wiped the tears from her begrimed face and looked at Twilight with a grimace. Her eyes lit up as she noticed a look of horror plastered upon her purple friend's face, alerted to something.
"Rainbow! Look out!" The creature that had stumbled in during the momentary lull of Rainbow's defensive efforts was suddenly upon the unaware technicolor pony. Rainbow screamed in terror as the writhing mass gave a shrill cry of wrathful pleasure. That sound was harrowing enough to crawl into the deepest trenches of the skull and claw away at any intact sanity.
"SMILLLLLLLLE!"
An earsplitting boom ripped through the air and the ravenous assailant's cranium burst in a mist of pink of carnage as splinters of wood from the wall behind her showered the blue pegasi below. The creature slumped down on top of Rainbow, lifeless and defeated. Spates of gore spurted from where the head was attached moments ago. Most of it, anyways.
"Git yer flanks up here!"
Twilight and Rainbow both turned to face the source of the voice. With an antique rifle adhered to her extended hoof, a familiar yet panicked face greeted them rather crudely. Distinguished cowboy hat on her head and her blonde mane in a bedraggled mess, Applejack lowered her firearm and rested it on the railing of the stairwell.
Rainbow rolled the corpse off of her and rose to her hooves. She spit foreign blood out of her mouth and wiped the bits of grey matter from her face. Looking down at the lifeless carcass beneath her, her expression became harrowed. Below her, splayed out in a mangled heap, was the decapitated form of one of her closest friends. Tail poofed up, reeking of sweets, Pinkie Pie almost looked peaceful. As much as one could without a head, that is. Visibly shaken, Rainbow screwed up her face as several tears rained down upon the pink tuft of fur on the chest of her dead friend. Hoof doused with blood from the pool now surrounding her, Rainbow placed it gently on Pinkie Pie's motionless sternum. Grief ripped through her. "I... I am so sorry... Pinkie... We... We did not know that..." Her voice cracked at the end of her wretched apology.
Twilight, hardly in a more emotionally stable state approached her with empathy, throwing a hoof around Rainbow's neck, "R-Rainbow... We have to go..."
Rainbow's eyes flashed in the direction of Twilight, fuming with ire. The piercing look shocked Twilight. Rainbow Dash spoke slowly, but with dangerously spiteful articulation, "This is your fault, Twilight Sparkle. If you would have just kept your egotistical little mouth shut, Pinkie wouldn't be..."
Twilight gaped at her, crestfallen. She hardly had time to ponder the situation. But Rainbow Dash was right. If she had not told them so bluntly...
"Shame on you, Rainbow Dash!" Applejack spat angrily from the stairway, glowering down at the technicolor pegasus, "Now is not the time to play the blame game! Now git yer sorry behinds up th-"
Applejack was cut off as something sailed in through the nearby window, shattering the glass and tearing down the shades. The three ponies stood frozen as light spilled into the room. Coming to rest, the bloody brick that demolished the atmosphere landed in plain sight between the three. Not only did it change the atmosphere by illuminating it, it warped it entirely. Flooding in like a plague, the eeriest noise to ever burrow into and scuttle around in the crevices of the pony skull spilled into the room from outside. Tearing at their sanity, the chorus of what seemed like thousands of happily blathering pink party ponies from outside hit the three ponies like a ton of bricks.
“T-Twilight…” All of the color drained from Rainbow Dash’s face. Twilight stared, appearing to have seen a ghost,
Applejack’s voice was hushed, harrowed. “Girls… upstairs…” Obviously intimidated and terrorized, the southern pony popped open her break action firearm and dropped a few more slugs into the chamber. With a crack she snapped it shut. “Now.”
The second story bedroom door creaked open an inch. As every room before it, drawn curtains kept it dark and ominous. Cold steel scraped against oak as a long cylindrical barrel slid into the room from the other side of the door. The barrel scanned the room, to and fro, then swung back and trained on a shadow in the corner. Bolt out of the blue, the door flew open and the orange mare leapt into the room, firearm and all. Silently she rose to attention in one fluid motion out of the roll. One eye closed, the other lined up down the sight of her firearm, trained on the blob in the corner of the dark room. Teeth bared, she prepared for it to lash out at her, but she gave a shocked expression, fought the urge to wretch, and dropped her forehooves. “Mother fu…” She turned away at what she found. Without making a noise she signaled for Twilight to enter the room.
With heavy hooves, the purple pony slinked into the room. A rickety ceiling fan whirred from the ceiling. Applejack dropped to all four hooves and stepped aside, muttering beneath her breath. Twilight’s eyes adjusted to the light. In the corner of the room, a rocking chair rested motionless. A hoof hung over the arm of the oaken chair, droplets of blood dripping off of the tip, drizzling down upon a discarded six-shooter. A pungent smell of decay stabbed at the sense of smell. The other hoof cradled a motionless bundle. Etched into the smatter of crimson on the wall were disturbing, sloppy words:
MAY WHOEVER AWAITS US FORGIVE ME
“What do we do, Twilight? What do we do!?” Applejack proclaimed in a hushed anger, disgusted.
Twilight Sparkle stood staring at the grisly scene, petrified. “I-I…”
“Well!?”
Still able to think under pressure, even through all of this, she knew what they had to do. “We find the other girls…” She tore her eyes away from the gore and gave Applejack a look of resolve, “Then we find Pinkie.”
Rainbow Dash hunkered down, flat against the wall, crouched beneath the window sill in the second floor restroom. Two ivory curtains parted an inch refused most of the light entrance. Lithely she turned around to face the sill. Sweat running down her tense pate, she slowly rose to peer out the window. With a panicked disposition, she parted the curtains squinted. Then her eyes widened. The once vibrant magenta of her iris’ immediately drained from her eyes when she saw what was awaiting outside.
Applejack and Twilight crept into the room without a peep. They appeared to be shell-shocked as well. Silently they approached the window as well. Rainbow Dash pressed a shaky hoof against the window pane.
Flooding the streets much like a parade of insanity, hundreds upon hundreds of manically jovial pink, poofy maned horses traipsed through the streets, howling their merry voices of madness.
“… we are fucked.”
Three blissful pink ponies hopped about the room. The looks on their faces were of absolute innocence as they merrily rummaged through any dresser or cupboard in sight. Their eyes seemed to be glossed over, as if there was a thick pane of glass distorting their realities. Something about those glassy eyes were very queer. They harbored an innate irreprochability and purity. Almost like a newborn. As they explored the dimly lit room, they chewed on tapestries before spitting them out, deeming them "icky". They grabbed hold of needles and poked themselves in the nose, as if they had no yet grasped the concept of cause and effect. They leaped up curiously at the spinning ceiling fan, obviously unaware of what would happen when they finally collided with a spinning oak vane. They all just seemed so... new to the world.
Yet out of place.
"Weeeee!" one squealed as it bounded past the other two towards a large upright armoire at the far end of the room. Her inquisitiveness was piqued when she could have sworn she heard a slight sniffle slip through the cracks between the doors. Mane lively and pink, eyes wide and smiling, mouth wide open prepared to greet whatever was inside, her hooves gripped the handles of the doors.
It all happened so quick and precise in the blink of an eye. Acting simultaneously with the parting doors, a long and slender blade slipped out of the darkness withing, poised with its tip inches away from the pink pony, and moving forward. The pink horse, eyes lit up with joy, intended on letting out a shriek of excitement at her discovery that had been awaiting for her inside, but it was replaced a cry of agony as the sharp object began gliding into her pupil.
The other two pink beings gasped as they turned to see one of their brethren hit the floor with sickening thud, motionless. Motionless save the white mare poised gracefully atop her, the weapon smoothing stealing back out of her cranium. Rising to her hooves, the white mare who sprung from the armoire flicked her blade in the air to her right, whisking the crimson from it. Her gaze was absolutely harrowed. It was plain in her sapphire eyes. Harrowed, yet brimming dejected resolve. They only showed heart-wrenching pain as the remaining two beings gasped and set upon her, one in front of the other.
